One day lad all this will be yours

When somebody comes with the good old: "One day..." threat, I always remember this scene from Monty Python and the Holy Grail. And the next scene with the guards is just a perfect model of typical human behaviour.



You can read the script of the dialogue here.

By the way, this is my 100th entry on this blog so...

Tarraaa!!! (triumph fanfare sound:-)))

Statistics Day

Today (Oct. 20th) is International Statistics Day. This is what Monthy Python has to say on statistics:




Well, "telling figures indeed" :-)))

You can find the script of the video here. (well, the first part anyway)

Always look on the bright side of life with a tattoo

Last Friday we went to a local karaoke bar. Although I like singing, it was that first time for me in an actual karaoke place with strangers watching the "performance". What do you do to feel more at ease under this kind of pressure? Reassure yourself that you are the best, repeat positive thinking mantras, take deep breaths? All of these may help but this time I went for the good old traditional confidence-maker: drink everything near you that seems to contain alcohol. It worked for me and the other folks in the place didn't take their courage from yoga breathing either. (or used it simultaneously with the boozing technique, which is cheating, anyway) One of my chosen songs was 'Always look on the bright side of life' from the M.P. film 'Life of Brian'. It went pretty well and it was a relief to find that the whistling is included on the backing track. I even tried to imitate Eric Idle's thick British accent, which surprisingly made me feel more secure. I must have felt that if I sing with an accent the people will overlook my own random variations of the tune. So, here is the song with subtitles in case you wanna have a go at it too. (vocals included)






The monologue at the end isn't included in the video but you can find a complementary script here.
If you are not a native speaker of English you may find these language notes useful.


As the night progressed, the shows got stronger and stronger and the place got higher and higher. Is it normal to feel that the songs in the karaoke are getting longer after midnight? That was my feeling - things slowed down a lot but in a good way. In this pleasantly numb state, I somehow received a little surprise: tattoos on both my arms drawn with a ball-point pen. The next day it took quite a bit of watching and scraping to get rid of them. I quite liked the rabbit, actually. If that is what it was meant to be. Does anybody have any ideas about the identity of the secret artist?
























left arm art
























right arm art

Learning to fly with the Hitchhiker's Guide and with the Pythons

Well, looks like we are back to the flying topic again. In dreams, it is not such a big deal. You jump up a bit, stretch your "wings", flap around a bit and then off you go. Sometimes the air has a strange resistance or some wires stop you from getting any higher but usually it works. Reality (meaning when you are awake, or at least when you think you are) is different. Planes, balloons, birds, butterflies, insects and flying squirrels can all fly but humans can't. Or maybe they can too? Douglas Adams, author of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy suggested a new technique. Let me quote him:

"There is an art, it says, or rather, a knack to flying. The knack lies in learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss. Pick a nice day, [The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy] suggests, and try it.
The first part is easy. All it requires is simply the ability to throw yourself forward with all your weight, and the willingness not to mind that it's going to hurt.
That is, it's going to hurt if you fail to miss the ground. Most people fail to miss the ground, and if they are really trying properly, the likelihood is that they will fail to miss it fairly hard.
Clearly, it is the second part, the missing, which presents the difficulties.
One problem is that you have to miss the ground accidentally. It's no good deliberately intending to miss the ground because you won't. You have to have your attention suddenly distracted by something else when you're halfway there, so that you are no longer thinking about falling, or about the ground, or about how much it's going to hurt if you fail to miss it.
It is notoriously difficult to prize your attention away from these three things during the split second you have at your disposal. Hence most people's failure, and their eventual disillusionment with this exhilarating and spectacular sport."

Well, only try it at home at your own risk! I am not saying you are sure to succeed but who knows? You can read the whole extract about Adams' flying method here.

The next method is the Monty Python way of flying. Some people might say that it is cheating a bit. Nevertheless, I found it hilarious. From this video you will not only learn to fly but you will also be able to master how to pronounce the word "aeroplane" with style. Ok, ready? Well then...up on the table...arms out, fingers together, knees bent, head forward. Now, flap your arms. Go on, flap, flap...faster... faster...

A bit off-topic matter, but now you also know why you should never ever remove an infant's pacifier:-)

You can read the script of the sketch here.

You can find some exercises for the post here.

Monty Python on Youtube

I think there are few people who are not familiar with them, but still for those of you who aren't, here is a very short introduction: Monty Python is a group of comedians who created Monty Python's Flying Circus, a TV comedy show, which was broadcast on British television between 1969 and 1974 and had a tremendous influence on the world of comedy. The show finished in 1974 but the group went on to make four films and a musical. Because of the absurdity of the sketches, people usually either love or hate the Pythons. Personally, I love them, not only because of their humour but also because the atmosphere of Flying Circus reminds me a bit of my first English books that were only slightly less bizarre.

The funniest Python, John Cleese, and his silly walk

Last November, the Pythons made their own channel on Youtube, partly because they were fed up with the illegal and often bad quality videos of their old shows on the site, and partly because this way they could advertise the sketches of the Flying Circus era as well as their films and their musical, Spamalot. Most of the videos are short and can be regarded as teaser spots, often ending at the best part. Fortunately, not all of them are like that. Look at this video, titled “Bicycle Repair Man”, which shows one of their best known and - in my opinion - one of their funniest sketches. The setting is a parody of the Superman comic book (with phoney American accents and a double-decker bus to make it more hilarious and grotesque!), and the hero is F.G. Superman, who can do a miraculous thing: repair bikes with his own hands! As you will see, the roles of hero and ordinary citizen have been mixed up quite a bit here.

Do some English exercises about the video.

Read the text of the video with language notes.

If you like this kind of humour you can watch some other videos on the Monty Python channel and download the scripts from here.

Mythical beasts / Dragons

No matter where you live you have surely heard of dragons. There are dragons in myths, in fairy tales and in all forms of art. They look like reptiles with clawed legs and large teeth and they usually (but not always) have wings.

However, there seems to be a huge difference between the dragons of the East and the dragons of the West. Even the dragons' habitat is different in the two cultures. Eastern dragons almost all live in some sort of damp place, more likely a lake or the ocean. The Western dragons are said to be able to live in the deserts or even in fire.

Western dragons are depicted as fire breathing, maiden-eating, dangerous beasts and are seen as unwanted and something that the hero must get rid of. In fairy tales, the dragon lives in a cave and the hero has to go to the cave to kill it and this way he can get the reward (the king's daughter in about 95 percent of the cases.) The hero always wins, naturally.) This is a kind of standard depiction of the western dragon, apart from the fact that this one seems to be trying to burn up its own tail:

http://www.cit.gu.edu.au/~anthony/dungeon/balcony/

If you are interested in adventures try this multiple choice adventure story.

Eastern dragons are different. They can look just as fierce but they are not evil. They can fly although usually they don't have wings. This is an Eastern image of a dragon:

http://www.draconika.com/chinese.php

The dragon is the only mythical creature in the Chinese zodiac. If you were born in the year of the dragon (1916-1928-1940-1952-1964-1976-1988-2000) then you are said to have an inclination to be:

innovative, enterprising, flexible, self-assured, brave, conceited, tactless, quick-tempered, vigorous, decisive, arrogant, pioneering

Although not all of these are necessarily considered as virtues, the dragon is the sign of wealth, health and general good luck in China. People born under this sign make good kings(!!) military officers, artist, athletes, stockbrokers, company directors and explorers.


There are some dragons that do not fit very well into the dragon category. They either cannot fly or do not have fangs or just do not have the right colour. Yet, somehow there is a certain kind of "dragonness", which makes you call them dragons instead of just plain monsters or beasts. One of my favourite of that kind is Monty Python's "Legendary Black Beast of Arrrggghhh". The following scene shows the meeting of the ('almost dragon') beast and the brave knights. This beast has numerous eyes in its head, it doesn't seem to have a wing, nevertheless I would still call it a dragon. And its behaviour and the cave where it lives also make it fit the category of western dragon.




You can read the script of the video here.

There is a lot of debate going on whether dragons did (do?!?) exist for real. I would like to finish this entry on dragons with a dragon that is definitely real. This picture was taken by a satellite from space. It shows a reservoir built along a river in southern Siberia. It has been nicknamed 'Dragon Lake' for obvious reasons. The picture was taken in winter when the lake is frozen.



















If you would like to practice some of the vocabulary in this entry try to do these exercises.